TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 17:11-19 That moment he put his foot into the bath of boiling water and watched it blister he knew he was in trouble. He remembered when he was a boy, touching a scolding pot and his mother shouting at him to run and put his hand in cold water. That did the trick forty years ago. This time there was nothing to relieve his dread, no ointment for his alarm, no balm for the horror. But it wasn't the agony of the burn to his foot that now caused Damien's distress. It was the lack of it. The deadness of his petrified nerve endings. The absence of pain that pronounced a death sentence.

Damien had grown up with a passion for God and a zeal for the suffering. He entered a monastery where he prayed every day that God would send him into the mission field to serve people in need. God looked with pride at the soul of Damien (how could he not?) and granted him the desires of his heart. And so in 1873 he set sail from his native Belgium to the Kingdom of Hawaii, to the island of Molokai. This tourists' paradise was not the gorgeous playground we lust after today. At the end of the 19th century you did not want to go to Molokai. You were sent to Molokai against your will. You were banished to Molokai. You went there to die. You see, Molokai was a leper colony. A government-sanctioned quarantine island. Quarantine makes it sound less terminal, doesn't it? You send your dog to quarantine to make sure she is not carrying any infectious diseases. You expect to be reunited with her when she is given a clean bill of health. But, if you were sent to Molokai you knew you were never coming home. Leprosy was without cure.

Damien had been on Molokai serving the sick, praying for the dying, burying the dead, for eleven years when he.... (Read the full Sermon here: When atheists understand God's heart.pdf )